Don't worry. None of this blood is mine.

Questions Answered

Way, way too many questions to do them all, guys. Sorry about that. I’ll try to hit the more relevant ones.

I cut and pasted the questions directly, to save myself some time:

“What have you found hardest about writing for the Grey Knights?”

Two things: one practical, one creative.

The practical difficulty was simply that the Grey Knight codex dropped while The Emperor’s Gift was already underway, and the changes in the lore meant that a lot of what I’d written was suddenly invalidated. Some bits needed rewriting, some bits needed scrapping. That’s contributed pretty massively to me missing this deadline, actually – which is weird, as for once the reason isn’t just me fucking around and writing slowly.

The creative difficulty is a pretty easy answer, too. It comes down to the fact that every single one of the Grey Knights is psychic. You already have the fact none of the Adeptus Astartes interact with humans (or with each other) in “normal” ways. Now you have their absolute bleeding edge elite warriors – the very limits of what you can do to a human body – and have to deal with the fact they’re also psychic.

The characters in The Emperor’s Gift are bonded closer than a Space Marine squad from any other Chapter could ever be. They speak psychically as often as with their voices, and they can sense each other’s emotions and thoughts as easily as you or I can read someone’s expression. Each of them is ferociously psychic on his own, but they excel when they channel their powers through their Justicar.

“What’s the news about you doing a 2-parters about Abaddons rising as new Warmaster? And will Void Stalker be the definite ending to the Night Lords series or is there some potential to sequals?”

There’s no news on the Abaddon series, because even if I knew I was doing it, it’s waaaayyyyyy too early to announce it. It might happen, it might not. I look at my notes from time to time, then feel guilty at my sliding deadlines, and try to get back to the serious business of finishing my current projects. If I ever did it (in my notes it’s called “The Abaddon Thing” or “Rise of the Warmaster”), then it’d probably be a long series, not a duology, anymore.

As for Void Stalker, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the end of the Night Lords Series, but it’s very definitely an end to that particular era.

“Putting the existing lore aside, which references (especially historical) did you look up? For the Night Lords you referred to the Mafia, in this case the Grey Knights may have something in common with the Knightly orders of the Medieval age. Was it difficult to make them distinct from the Black Templars, even if they have something in common (heraldry etc) ?”

The Grey Knights are so distinct that it’s almost impossible to make them like anyone or anything else. They’re humanity stretched to its absolute limit, with a more sacred and secret duty than any other living beings in the galaxy. From reading a lot of Dark Ages and Middle Ages jazz through the years (much of which was for RPG work), I’ve got a pretty solid grip on the ins and outs of knightly life. There’s not a lot of it that applies to the Gee Kays, but they definitely have a knightly atmosphere around them, especially on Titan, in their fortress-monastery.

“Like the cover art more there than when I first saw it. Looking forward to TEG!”

Me too. And, me too.

“What will you bring to the table writing Grey Knights that is different from the previous Grey Knights novels with Justicar Alaric?”

That’s actually dead difficult to answer. I’m not sure. I mean… a different writing style, I guess. I write differently to Ben Counter. It’ll be my approach to characterisation and description, and TEG focuses on a newly-inducted Grey Knight, trying to find his place after being placed in a very honourable squad with a long and noble history.

I think it involves a little more interaction with humans (the squad spends much of its time with an Inquisitor and her warband), and there’s probably different types of interaction between the squadmates themselves, and their enemies. It’s my take on the Grey Knights, really. I want to show a very deep slice of what it’s like to live as one of them.

“Did you get headaches writing for Grey Knights?”

Sort of. It’s written in the first person, like Eisenhorn and… a bajillion other novels… which was a new experience, but it’s not been any harder than writing in the third person. I’ve been writing as slow as I usually do. It’s just different, rather than worse.

“We are coming up on 6 years since the first Horus Heresy book was published, I know the series is very popular, but being in the know, any idea how much longer it will stretch out before they get to the end?”

“How did recent fluff regarding the Grey Knights exterminating Daemons on their home-turf ( inside the warp) and Draigo making the Dark Gods cry like pristine Japanese schoolgirls with his Chuck Norrisian round-kick, affect your work and do you agree with the changes?Also, don’t you think that making the Grey Knights unbeatable kinda makes them ridiculous ?”

Uh.

It affected my work “a lot”, in that I had to trash a lot of it. That hurt, but it comes with the territory. I wasn’t even annoyed, just pretty demoralised for a while. It also meant that instead of writing a duology, I decided to do just the one novel, and move on to another project. Some of the rewrites happened because of me making it one story instead of two, but most came about because a lot of the lore simply changed underfoot. You shouldn’t take that as me ragging on the new design philosophy for the Grey Knights, as it’s nothing so blunt and simple. Stuff changes all the time – you can’t be a baby about it, it’s just the nature of the beast when it comes to working within an established IP.

As to the “unbeatable” thing, I don’t think it makes them ridiculous, but I can’t speak objectively, really. I can say that (on a personal level) their new incorruptibility diminishes a lot of what I liked about them. It changes a lot of what I found noble about them into something else. There’s a world of difference between “No Grey Knight has ever fallen to Chaos because of their constant effort and absolute purity” and “Grey Knights simply can’t fall to Chaos because of what they are, so they’re free to use the weapons of the enemy if they wish.” I’m not saying one is better than the other. Both are interesting takes on the elite order. They’re just very different in theme, atmosphere and characterisation.

“Do you have much freedom to play around with the established canon or does the Ordo Black Librarius keep a close eye on such things?”

“Your Dark Angel short story “Savage Weapons” was epic in the latest HH anthology. Have you considered writing a “contemporary” Dark Angel novel/short story, set in the 41st Millennium – or are the Dark Angels given over to Gav Thorpe?And Merry Christimas!”

Many thanks. Dead proud of that story. I’d love to write a Dark Angels novel or series, but time is a factor, and I have almost none of it. If I was going to write about a loyalist Chapter, I’d be likely to choose either:

– The Blood Angels or one of their Successors.

– The Dark Angels or one of their Successors.

– A Chapter that Forge World has done a lot of work with, like the Red Scorpions.

– Create my own Unforgiven Chapter.

Merry Christmas to you, too. Ya wee scamp.

“Are they planning to do an audio version of this book? And did the cyber mastiff really make it into the cast list?”

I think so. But the amount of psychic speech involved makes my head hurt to think of how they’ll do it.

And yes, he did.

“You’ve written short stories for the Flesh Tearers and Crimson Fists, would you ever consider writing more with them (single novel or series)?”

Sort of. I wanted to write for the Flesh Tearers a while ago, but it was refused first because it’d be too close to the Blood Angels series that Jim was doing. That was also when I was very new, and the word “No” featured more often than it does now. More recently, I know a friend of mine is hoping to get more involved with them, so I’d not pitch for them out of respect for him.

As for the Crimson Fists, I have a lot of love for those guys. They’d be in the Top Ten choices for a loyalist Chapter I’d write about, but I’m still (jokingly) bitter my 14-page pitch for a Crimson Fist trilogy was vetoed when Rynn’s World was already being written in secret.

“You seem to like finding the empathetic, likable element to the traditional 40K “bad guys,” even as their evil is undeniable. With the Grey Knights being about as “good guys” as they get, how are you looking to give us an emotional hook into them? Are you going to do the revere and dirty them up a bit, or do you have somethin more devious in mind?”

In a lot of ways, the Grey Knights are less human than, say, Talos and First Claw, or even Grimaldus. Those guys were human children, taken and brainwashed, fueled by either duty, hatred or both as they waged war down the centuries. Grey Knights are beyond even that. They know nothing at all of human life. They remember none of it. They spend their entire lives seeing things that would drive humans insane, and can never share their secrets.

I think the most interesting angle with them is just how different and angelic they are. Like that moment when the little girl asks Grimaldus of the Black Templars if he’s a hero, and he has no idea what to say. He has no context to judge what she means, and no capacity to see the world from her perspective. He has honour badges on his armour, and a history of glory in warfare, but a simple question like that means almost nothing to him. Can he save those people? Would a hero, by their standards, do that? All he wanted to do was die in glory. To the Adeptus Astartes, that was the definition of heroism. To the human refugees looking to him as a saviour… not so much.

Grey Knights operate on that austere, inhuman level all the time. Humans are a complete mystery to them. I think that’s what’s interesting about them.

Y’know, plus all the daemon-killing.

“Will you finish it on time?”

Nope! In fact, it’s already late.

“So with Void Stalker in the bag and The Emperor’s Gift being all shiny with it’s cover art, are there any other Astartes Chapters or Legions that you’d like to write about?”

Whatever’s likeliest to get Forge World to make models of it, in the spirit of ultimate collusion and sexy teamwork.

“As a writer do you find it challenging at times to keep in tune with the IP, of all the authors for BL/GW you seem in my opinion to be one of the few authors who ‘gets’ 40k. I know that is of course subjective but from my perspective if we look at the IP say from the ‘gaming’ point of view, reading Codices or White Dwarf there appears to be an angle which is, make the army we have just released utterly awesome-skyrim+9-to-the-max even if it goes against current lore or seems completley out of character based on existing lore. Do you just try and avoid or ignore work that has an air of marketting to the teenage demograph, or do you try and incorporate the new lore and make it work within the context of existing BL work.”

Look for the mature angle in everything. Look for what you can make into compelling, convincing fiction. I don’t write novels for kids, and I get more than my fair share of editorial feedback that says “Take this out…” and “Tone that down…”.

The most recent example was when Octavia, the Echo of Damnation’s Navigator, was symbiotically linked to the warship’s machine-spirit while they flew through the void. And the soul of the machine was so galvanised and thrilled to be hunting through the warp and destroying enemy vessels, that its primal pleasure at fulfilling its raison d’etre was starting to bleed through the link into her mind. She usually had the strength to control the machine-spirit, but she was exhausted and wounded, and her body responded in a primal and human way, as raw pleasure coursed through her mind and beyond. I knew that it wouldn’t go through editing, so I changed it.

I edited it down like crazy, and it was still cut, even when it was just a final sentence about her trying to fly the ship and ignore a distractingly pleasant ache between her legs.

So, in short, anything relatively adult along those terms will be axed anyway.

I’m always sort of awkward when I have to sign something for someone younger than 16 or whatever, though. It’s not about trying to write for adults or kids; it’s just a matter of writing what feels right and not dumbing anything down.

A lot of adults like the movie Blade, right? To me, it’s one of the worst things humanity has ever done, and childishly shallow beyond belief. One man’s paradise is another man’s poison.

“Although there are a number of reasons I say this (im sure you have heard the rage before) the one that set me off was the Grey Knight Dreadknight, which on a personal level I feel looks like a giant baby carrier, something my local GW Manager will not let me say out loud in his shop (I hate those Deomcracies of one). But the justification for the model and concept was ‘wouldnt it be great for Astartes to go toe to toe with a Demon, when all previous lore, and I think a fairly central theme to 40k is the idea that humanity isnt going toe to toe with anyone, everything prior to this model is the one guy, normally with a massive hammer holding out against impossible odds against things bigger, meaner and probably way better in bed that he has ever been.”

About going toe-to-toe… That’s true, sure. Going toe-to-toe against helpless odds is where the pathos is, I guess. I wouldn’t dispute that, but I don’t think it means the Dreadknight has no place at all. It’s just a new dynamic. It’s not any one person’s place to say whether something is Absolutely Right or Absolutely Wrong for the setting. 40K is all about shades of grey, and a billion possibilities.

Personally, the Dreadknight is one of the aspects of the Grey Knight changes that I’m not putting in the novel. It’s not that I think the concept sucks, or anything. It’s purely a matter that (like you, but less… angry) it diverges from what I like about that particular aspect of 40K. As writers, we’re all free to put in and take out what we like and dislike about the setting, by focusing on what we enjoy.

For me, when it comes to fighting daemons in 40K, it’s a seminal and quintessential deal of the whole license. It’s the lone man with a broken sword, fighting through his wounds against a creature twenty times his size. It’s that cold, cold moment when he looks up… and up… and up… and realises he’s absolutely fucked. He’s going to die. But he has faith, and he has a hammer, and he’s the only one left to hold the line. Being equal to the daemons isn’t something that interests me, but I can see why a Grey Knight would invent the Dreadknight. I just prefer the Warhammer: Mark of Chaos trailer-style daemon fight, or Inquisitor Rex standing against the towering form of An’ggrath, or Gandalf against the Balrog.

You’ll notice Gandalf doesn’t try to kill the Balrog. He shouts “You shall not pass.” He’s holding the line, not trying to carve his name in its heart. They’re both 40K-style actions, it’s just that one resonates with me more.

“What is ‘The Emperor’s Gift’?Did you collaborate with the artist on the cover art?How good is ‘heretically good’?”

1. It’s a nod to a line in the Grey Knight codex. “A Grey Knight’s psychic presence is anathema to creatures of the warp, utterly unpalatable to a Daemon’s dark appetites and thus entirely immune to corruption. Such was the Emperor’s gift to the first Grey Knights; a legacy renewed in each new generation of Battle-Brothers.”

Incidentally, sometimes the capitalisations in 40K confuse the hell out of me.

2. I did, but much less than usual. I sent a few notes, that was about it.

3. No idea, dude. You’d have to ask Dan.

“Is this a story arc likely to turn into a series?Are we going to see many (if any) characters appearing from other established books (yours or other authors) or codexes?”

1. …depends on reader feedback, I guess. It’s not my plan, but there’s a lot of scope for it. Spin-offs, especially.

2. Yeah, but not many. The first book originally had zero “famous” characters like that, but with the story evolving as it did (and becoming one book instead of two) there are now a few famous types nosing about here and there. Which is weird, as it wasn’t the original intent. None of them are main characters.

“I second the question about Abaddon ! A rise of the warmaster dualogy would be great ! By the way, when does prince of crows take place ? Will it feature the dark angels and the Lion again also and the tsagualsa battles between night lords and dark angels or will it be about another event / time ?”

The Prince of Crows takes place at the end of the Thramas Crusade, when the Night Lords have literally just lost to the Dark Angels. The Dark Angels aren’t in it much; it’s mostly about the Night Lords dealing with the fallout, and a lot of Curze’s introspection about where he’s at in life.

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I always thought the dreadknight concept was because the Grey Knights weren’t as keen on dreadnaughts as the other chapters. Cool concept, execution lacking IMHO. That said, the silhouette of a grey knight being dwarfed by a daemon and still doing his duty against the odds is much cooler.

Wow, I got an answer. Thank you very much, Mister Dembski- Bowden.
This made my day feel like that Slaanesh vision Talos saw in Soul Hunter (coincidentally I’m half-way through it, great book, even if you’re tired of hearing this probably, I will confess that I got insanely mad reading it, because as a writer, I hated when another writer’s exceptionally good, just like Hemingway says it in Midnight in Paris)
Keep up the good work, sir.
I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2012 (Apocalypse Nibiru nonsense aside) filled with accomplishments, missed deadlines and awesome novels

Thanks for the response ADB I must admit when the DreadKnight came out, and the tipping point being reading the Blood ‘we get it, not everything has to have blood, red or any variance of the two’ Angels Codex with an icing of Golf Thunderhawk GTI, ahem, Storm Raven I was utterly disheartened with the GW and the IP in general. I guess its because i started the hobby in my early teens when everything was geared more to the young adult. I definatley think overtime the target demograph has gone down and as such the nature of the lore outside of BL published material. So much so that I gave up on the hobby outside of the novels. I guess my frustration has ebbed slightly and I now take the stance of not reading the text in Codeces and play the game an enjoy the hobby for what I want it to be, of course the only downside to that is I have to avoid posting in all forums and generally avoid speaking to anyone inside a GW store. If i see one more Which Primarch is the best discussion someone is going to die in a Spork related bloodbath.

Oh and while Blade is bad, worse than Twilight in my opinion which at least had the decency to do something different with Vampires, and that is the only thing it will get as a compliment.. of sorts. However Top Gun must be at the top of the pile of films that should never have been.

okay, let’s not put decency and Twilight in the same sentence together.
Come to think of it, let’s not even mention ‘that movie’ in this location.
It’s kinda like talking about the latest midget-porn you just saw, while inside a church, during a funeral service. Of a Mormon. Who went to Iraq. Who was secretly gay. And you’re talking to his mother.
Yeah. That sort of awkward .

Blade is crap. Underworld however is a great trilogy, and it had real werewolves in it. Not the crappy kind you start to see now, I mean REAL werewolves. And REAL vampires, not the abominations that Twilight spawned.

I was a little meh about a Grey Knights novel, but i’m a big fan of characterisation and lore development over action driven stories. I have faith that it will suck me in.

A Prince of Crows sounds equally exciting. [Enter Primarch Name] + introspection = my cup of tea. I like what Dan Abnett did with Dorn in the Lightning Tower and am looking forward to seeing what occurs with the ‘so mad, he’s talking sense’ primarch.

And I equally have trouble with 40k lexicon capitalisation. I haven’t figured it out at all – [seemingly] random nouns are capitalised and others aren’t.

I guess none of you heretics were ever haunted by your father’s legacy and thus driven to daring acts that ultimately cost your best friend’s life before realizing the secrets to success – both in war and life in general.

“Top Gun” and “Rocky IV” (a codex to avenging your best friend’s senseless death while also ending four decades of nuclear standoff) are manuals to being a man, you bastards!

Konrad Curze and Lion El’Jonson may have been mortal enemies, but they stand united in their contempt of you who denounce such gems of cinema and motivation.

I love Top Gun from my childhood, but would probably cringe watching it as an adult.

An Abaddon series would be awesomeness. Hopefully it features plenty of elaboration of his views regarding the merits of conversion beamers and Whirlwinds, along with some more eye-poking of Khorne’s champion.

ADB said:
“The most recent example was when Octavia, the Echo of Damnation’s Navigator, was symbiotically linked to the warship’s machine-spirit while they flew through the void. And the soul of the machine was so galvanised and thrilled to be hunting through the warp and destroying enemy vessels, that its primal pleasure at fulfilling its raison d’etre was starting to bleed through the link into her mind. She usually had the strength to control the machine-spirit, but she was exhausted and wounded, and her body responded in a primal and human way, as raw pleasure coursed through her mind and beyond. I knew that it wouldn’t go through editing, so I changed it.
I edited it down like crazy, and it was still cut, even when it was just a final sentence about her trying to fly the ship and ignore a distractingly pleasant ache between her legs.”

Sorry but this is lame, on BL’s/GW’s behalf.

Mentioning Killings, maimings, eviscerations, mutillations etc, is not a problem for the kids but a woman “feeling pleasant ache between her legs” is a sentence/theme that’s to be censored… What can I say… “Oh Tempora! Oh Morres!”

IMO, BL should just put a disclaimer on their books regarding content and allow the writters to mention whatever they feel that would make their story/novel so much better. Swearing (not BL swearing which sucks) and sex are a part of life – and a far more usual one that all the brutal killing (thankfully!) – and can tone up a situation/part of a story in a far better way that just being ignored or implied. Also I don’t think that a good writer would overabuse this freedom, in case that anyone fears sth like that would happen.

Sex is taboo, un-natural and censor-worthy. Violence, war, mutilation and all the above however? No problem. But this is our society, sadly, not just BL staff or company. The same can be seen all ovetr the media. I agree with you but I don’t think BL are to blame, it’s just a sad truth of society.

If you read some of the really old GW books, im not sure if they fell under BL back then (talking about 16 years ago at the very least) they were really brutal. I remember quite vividly a greater deamon on slaanesh raping someone one a Warhammer fantasy book. But like i said in my question when i first went into a GW store as an 11 year old pretty much everyone around me was late teens early 20s. Infact in my local GW there were 3 of us who were still at school who weren’t quite literally turned away at the door by staff and told ‘come back when you are 16.’

Let me get this straight.
You can write about Talos throat-raping a convict, turning his teeth to shards then pressing the trigger thus making his head to pop like a pinata but you can’t write about a woman feeling an ache between her legs?
I don’t get it, is 40k suppose to be asexual?
And the editors are okay with senseless slaughter but not with women feeling pleasure?
So love-stories are forbidden in 40k now? 😐

I think it’s more to do with the fact that contemporary society shuns sexuality etc. but violence is ok. Comparatively some places have the opposite balance (french films feature much more sexual content as allowable in lower rated films, but violence is a sure way to get a higher rating). It’s not 40k being asexual so much as stuff in general, especially stuff aimed at kids (and 40k does aim at least part of their stuff at kids).

Wow, some serious hate for Blade/Top Gun in here. Not going to leap to the defense, more then to raise the point that they’re to real movies as maccas is to real food. They’re supposed to be shallow, bad for you, etc. and not taken too seriously and therein lies the enjoyment.

On the topic of the censoring by BL, I’m not surprised, just mildly disappointed. It hooks into the issue where seeing someone’s stomach spill everywhere is more normal then seeing some parts of the actual anatomy, and the general prudish attitude towards many things, but that’s a rant for another place and time.

Dan is Dan. He genuinely (as in, not a joke) doesn’t have to follow the same rules as the rest of us. I have more than one example of something Dan’s done that other authors aren’t allowed to do. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Not sure if this has been answered already, but you mentioned in the past about not having input on the Book covers, and now you said that the Grey Knights Codex came out prompting a re-do of some of the novel.

I would have imagined it would be a collaborative effort where you are kept abreast of plans to codexes etc while they are still in the planning stages, like being sent the minutes of the meetings the game designers make, or having them have notes of stuff you writers are planning to do so you can feed off each other.

Or is it a case where that takes place but due to the length of time between updates, shit just falls through the cracks ?

Who? Why?

My name’s Aaron W Dembski-Bowden.

Don’t ask about the W – let’s just forget it exists and forgive my parents for a bizarre choice of middle name. Y’know, I used to tell people it stood for Wolfgang, but no one ever believed me. I’m not a skilled liar.

I write a lot, and people pay me to do it. I argue a lot, but I do that for free. If you want to start paying me to argue, please apply within. My rates would be generous, and my cynical wrath without peer.

I have a cat, but I prefer dogs. Most of my clothes are black, but my favourite colour is orange. I was born in a really dark, grim patch of London, but I moved to the greenest parts of Northern Ireland. This last factoid arises from being in love with a beautiful Irish girl who foolishly agreed to marry me – and that it’s easier to write out here in the middle of nowhere with only fields, cats, and hot redheads for company.